Musk Babu! How will you fulfill your promise when there are obstacles standing in your way? These are the challenges waiting in the Trump Administration.

Dan Cassino: Donald Trump has been elected President of America. Trump has promised a key role for businessman Elon Musk in his/her administration as head of the Government Efficiency Committee. In such a situation, now Musk is going to know how different the government is from the companies run on his/her behalf. It’s exactly like Truman said about his/her successor, General Dwight Eisenhower, ‘he/she’ll sit here, and say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ Nothing else will happen…they will find it very disappointing. Musk has promised to reduce the waste of trillions of dollars from the US budget. They have also put forward policies that will benefit their companies. In Musk’s view, the biggest promises to humanity – but these – are likely to run into the same problems that Truman predicted Eisenhower would face.

How will the federal budget be cut?

After Musk bought Twitter (now X), he/she promised to cut costs and did so primarily by laying off most of its employees. Despite predictions that the website would soon be shut down, the employees who were laid off continued to work. However, some departments and work efficiencies have been lost.

This seems to be the most likely path for Musk to follow through on his/her promise to make drastic cuts to the federal budget, as he/she did on Twitter. They had cut jobs that they considered unnecessary. From this perspective, the Federal Government, like their social media sites, can accomplish most of their core functions with a much smaller staff.

Of course, the savings Musk and Trump have talked about can’t be achieved through staff cuts alone, but getting rid of federal employees has also proven difficult for previous administrations. The US federal budget is huge – but most of it is spent on health services, Social Security and the military. This has not been discussed in previous efforts to cut spending.

How difficult is the path of the new President?

The President makes approximately 4,000 appointments in the Federal Government. he/she can refuse to appoint anyone to those positions (something he/she did to some extent in his/her first term), but that’s a drop in the bucket for the nearly 30 lakh people who serve in some capacity. Work for the Federal Government. Most of these employees are secure under the Civil Services Law. This has been done to protect them from politics and changes in administration. This means that they cannot be fired from the job without reason.

Furthermore, eliminating departments in the federal government is politically treacherous. For example, every Republican president since Reagan has promised to eliminate the Department of Education, but no one has been able to do so, because those departments exist for a reason. Congress creates departments because there is political demand for them, and Congress is reluctant to eliminate them.

This potentially alienates voters who like the work those departments do. Sure, some functions of the federal government could be handed over to the states, but that wouldn’t mean less taxes or less spending – just more taxes and more spending in state governments, which would do the same job, just less efficiently.

Where will Musk benefit?

On some personal issues, Musk is likely to have more success in bending the government to his/her will. Support for space exploration – and thus for Musk’s company, SpaceX – is likely to be a legislative priority for Musk. Support for space exploration has traditionally been bipartisan. In such a situation, a Republican President could possibly garner support for increased funding through Congress.

Similarly, Musk’s Tesla company would benefit from increased federal support for electric cars. These benefits could be either through rebates for purchases, or through improvements in charging infrastructure. These have traditionally been Democratic priorities, making them relatively easy for a Republican president to pass.

In recent years, Republicans have also pushed for increased oversight of social media companies, but it’s hard to imagine they’ll continue to do so as long as Musk listens to the president. For decades, Congress has given a lot of power to the President and his/her advisers. There is a lot of work as well. For example tariffs – which the President can now impose on his/her own with or without congressional approval. When the actions Musk wants to force Trump to take fall into these areas, he/she is likely to succeed.

Democrats’ support will be needed

But the areas Congress cares most about are taxes and spending in particular. These have received a great deal of attention, and the President can only make major changes in conjunction with Congress. Despite Republican control of both the House and Senate, any significant legislation must overcome the delaying tactic known as the filibuster in the U.S. Support of 60 votes is required in the Senate.

This means that the kind of large-scale changes that have been promised – such as cutting trillions of dollars from the budget or laying off large numbers of federal workers – will require support not only from skeptical Senate Republicans but also from opposition Senate Democrats. Will be required.

Such efforts were not successful earlier

Previous attempts to circumvent Congress in matters like these, such as Nixon’s refusal to spend money allocated through Congress and using sequestration to cut funding for programs he/she did not like, failed. Have been. Moreover, any attempts to sideline the Congress happen in areas that are important to it. This deteriorates relations between the President and Congress. This makes it difficult for them to get anything passed later.

It will be difficult to fulfill the promise

Musk’s biggest promise – $2 trillion in spending cuts – will be difficult or impossible to keep, but smaller promises will also be more difficult than he/she probably realizes. Unlike companies, government is designed to be inefficient, slow to change. This is unlikely to change any time soon.

(The author is Professor of Government and Politics, Fairleigh Dickinson University.)